Sewing!??:Finally cleared off some space for my sewing machine and started on some of the projects that have been sadly staring at me from boxes for 2 years. Specifically, a waistcoat and a science dress. Neither turned out perfectly but I achieved my goals.

Wheel of the Infinite by Martha Wells: Fantasy about a middle aged priestess who's fallen significantly from grace facing Supernatural Shenanigans with wry resignation. Reminds me a lot of Paladin of Souls, except set in a tropical country (loosely based on...a mixture of Tibet and North Africa maybe??) A little underwritten but otherwise really good. The 30 something pale skinned foreign swordsman who would be the hero in most books is just the love interest, and happy to let the heroine take the lead :D (He's on the cover of some versions of the book anyway because BLAH PUBLISHING INDUSTRY) Normally "friends with benefits" relationships don't work for me but they have a really nice friendship, plus makeouts. And the worldbuilding is interesting and feels real. A lot of it was very predictable if you've read the right kinds of fantasy, and all the twists were heavily telegraphed, but it all made sense and came to a fairly satisfying conclusion.

Color and Light by James Gurney: A non fiction book on painting by the guy who made Dinotopia. I am reading it VERY SLOWLY but it's been interesting and I've definitely learned some stuff I will use for my art.

Wuvable Oaf: A big hairy gay man with a sweet nature looks for love. Cute for what it is, but too indie-comic-weird for my tastes, I didn't feel connected to the characters and found the art style and occasional grossness off putting.

Kevin Keller: Welcome to Riverdale. First gay Archie character! It’s otherwise a typical Archie comic eg kinda bland, and I got bored and stopped. ( games and music )

And my favourite of the works I've seen, a short but interesting little interactive poem:You are Building an Abbey for Lovers (54 words) by AnonymousChapters: 1/1Fandom: Bele Doette (Traditional Chanson)Rating: General AudiencesWarnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive WarningsCharacters: Bele DoetteAdditional Tags: Interactive Fiction, Jukebox TreatSummary:

You are building an abbey for loversFor lovers who've always stayed trueYou are carving your heartSo it says press to start.

I didn't request this for jukebox because I have a very specific story in mind which, as I only realised as I watched the video for signups, is 100% not what the song is actually about. Also I like the other songs I requested more, in the end. But I wanted to get my original interpretation down before the actual meaning wipes it out.

The setting is the far future, but with fantasy/horror elements. The Mercy Seat is part of some sort of quasi-religious/mystical role, judging other people's crimes/truths. The singer is a man from a poor background who feels utterly overwhelmed by the position, he does his best but is a largely powerless cog in a large machine and increasingly worn down. The seat itself may literally be taking the life from him. He thinks he is likely to die, maybe that's just how the Mercy Seat works or maybe other powerful people/beings are working against him, but struggles on.

(The actual song is quite clearly about someone about to be put to death by electric chair. I really don't know how I missed that all these years. Maybe I got confused by the original meaning?)

jukebox_fest is an exchange where you write fic, record podfic, or draw art based on a song (woo for them having art this year!). I did a treat last year and it was great fun. Nominations are open until April 4 so if you're interested in getting involved make sure there's some songs you find inspiring! The list of nominated songs looks promising.

I was about to nominate The Mercy Seat by Nick Cave but watching the video made me realise it's about an execution not about becoming some sort of doomed judge-King (yes it only took me 27 years shush). I could prompt for my interpretation anyway I guess but am feeling less enthused.

I am going to have trouble coming up with any prompts that aren't about doomed femslashy robots. Also I'm going to have to think carefully about what to offer, because my art style tends to suit happy humour, not the kind of weird angst my music taste tends towards.

The Poster Children by Kitty Burroughs: I was sold this as a diverse superhero YA, and hoped the first two would negate my dislike of the third but nope. Two self righteously disagreeable POV characters in and I couldn't take any more and gave up.

Agents of Change by Sharon Lee and Steve Miller: Was halfway through this on the plane before I remembered I'd read it before while very ill. haven't gotten back to it since getting off the plane, I really should. Anyway, it's fun! Though I vaguely recall not liking the ending.

Fanfic:

The Vienna Game by Paratactitian: Homestuck, Terezi<>Sollux. An enjoyable cyberpunk AU caper, the characterisations didn't always work for me (more because the AU hadn't changed them enough than because they differed too much from canon) and it was well-meaning-male-gaze-y (eg we just HAPPENED to never see any of the gay/bi male characters express interest in other men) but still, fun.

I don't normally list fic but it got me through the plane trip to Melbourne after Poster Children dissapointed me.

TV: (New)

Watamote: What an interesting show! It's an anime about a socially awkward girl who freezes up whenever she tries to talk to anyone, but instead of the typical adorable woobie she's a genuinely weird loser, with sunken eyes and weird taste in porn and sour grapes thoughts about other more popular girls. She's likeable despite this, at least for me, and the show pokes affectionate fun at her. I saw someone describe it as best enjoyed by those who can go "Oh god I used to be like that", and while I had more anxiety and like to think I wasn't quite so mean spirited there are certainly...paralells. She isn't showing any signs of being Saved By A Boy's Love either, just slowly making efforts to reach out to people off her own bat (often in wrong headed ways, but she takes even the slightest win as proof of her INCREDIBLE AWESOME so it's not too depressing) I'm only two episodes in, will see how it goes!

Brooklyn 99: a surprisingly enjoyable police comedy: light and funny with likeable characters and enough mild continuity not to irritate me. Pretty diverse too, and the "genius manchild"-esque white guy not only gets called out on his crap but improves. A bit fat shamey, alas.

(Continuing)Natsume's Book of Friends: I am enjoying this an episode at a time, it's very gentle and sweet without much overarching plot.

Elementary and Sleepy Hollow continue well, Marvel: Agents of Shield continues adequately. (And Joss Whedon continues to have Issues with Black People) Am not up to date with Korra yet *resists urge to poke Cam awake* but am not a massive fan of this season so far, though it has it's moments.

Coursera: Finished my "Online Games: Literature, New Media, and Narrative" course which certainly gave me a better grounding in the Classics modern fantasy draws on and got me thinking about remediation (where a work is translated from one media to another) but would have been SO much better if the lecturer had been willing to be more critical. Oh well.

Movies: Star Trek: Into Darkness! Saw it today! Apart from one or two VERY SKETCHY DECISIONS RACEWISE(*) and some silly plot holes it was quite enjoyable. It hit me in the Star Trek TOS feels without saying or doing anything very new, I don't know how enjoyable it would be for anyone who doesn't feel lots of affection for the original series and/or previous movie, though there were thrilling explosions and all that. The female characters and POC got to do stuff and be competent but it was mostly about Spock and Kirk (and to a lesser extent Bones and then the rest of the crew) The Spock&Kirk relationship wasn't self consciously slashy, just friendship which in no way conflicted with Spock/Uhura etc *ships Uhura/Spock/Kirk even more than previously* Anyone who hasn't seen the original movies who liked this one should definitely watch them, there's some cute paralells (maybe start from 2, I have heard bad things about 1)

Music: Fantasies by Metric. Which I discovered almost entirely through Homestuck fanmixes haha. Really enjoying it, bought a copy from JB Hifi.

Games: Candy Box! Silly fun little browser game. Give it a little while to get going before you give up on it.

What I'm reading/playing etc right now:Jade Empire, finally got it to work. It didn't grab me though so I've played like 5 minutes.

I made this ages ago but totally forgot about it until stumbling upon the last, unuploaded song while sorting through my files. Rather cheesy, and I'm having trouble remembering the logic behind some of my choices, but it was fun to construct :) Cover image by me.( Song list and lyric quotes )

I have to admit that before I started looking into it, while I thought Janelle Monae was pretty talented I didn't understand why so many people wanted works based on her videos. But once I started reading about the whole ArchAndroid thing I became really taken with the whole concept and character of Cindi Mayweather, and the Tightrope video gained a whole new layer of meaning.

Dessa, "A Badly Broken Code": Another album discovered through fanvids :) Dessa was a poet before she got into hip-hop, and it shows. She has a nice voice too. The first album I've ever bought complete from iTunes! Here's a sample song: Alibi, about helping friend escape a bad relationship.

Polly and the Pirates: A funny, cute little graphic novel about a proper young lady in a semi-Victorian San Francisco who finds herself tangled in the affairs of pirates.

The Reluctant Infidel: A moderate British Muslim discovers he is ethnically Jewish, and goes on a quest to understand what that means. I tried really hard to like this movie, but eventually had to skip to the end. It's heart was in the right place, and it had funny moments, but most of the jokes tried way too hard and were painfully awkward.

Echo Bazaar: I've been playing this Lovecraftian browser-based text game for a while. I got bored of it a while ago but bought myself an "exceptional friend" pass for a month while Cam was away, and figured out how to make it more fun: be willing to pay for and use the objects that raise (or in some cases lower) your stats. It make levelling up much quicker and allows you to skip boring sections more easily. Yeah, ok, probably obvious to anyone with sense. I just today became a Person of Some Importance, huzzah :D

Saw Harry Potter today. I quite liked it, they managed to keep pretty much everything I liked about the book and cut out most of the bits I didn't. It still dragged a bit in places and didn't feel as epic as I would have liked, but I still got all excited and sniffled etc at the requisite moments.

I recently read the original book of "The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya" by Nagaru Tanigawa, and I found I liked it less than the anime adaptation. This confused me since I couldn't see any major differences apart from being more linear and dryly understated. Eventually I realised that while I'm happy enough with highschool anime I'm much less interested in what felt like(*) a Young Adult novel from the POV of a 15 year old boy. Especially since Kyon is such a passive skeeze, I liked him more when I could enjoy watching bad things happen to him without having to be in his head.

That said, once it got going and stopped focussing quite so much on which of his classmates Kyon thought was the hottest it was a fairly enjoyable light scifi/fantasy story. It stops at the same place as the first season of the anime but has less plot, since the anime added in lots of extra hijinks which I assume come from the later novels.

I also bought the first new album I've bought in ages, Florence and the Machine's "Lungs", aka "The soundtrack to femslash". I have only encountered songs from it in the context of vids and fanmixes about the relationships between women (plus as the ending song to Dragon Age 2, which has plenty of such relationships too), and there are five different songs I've seen used in notable ways, some multiple times. I can see why, *insert the sort of lyric and music analysis I suck at here* Girl with One Eye is so perfect for Vriska/Terezi it's a little uncanny (though I find myself wondering how actual one eyed girls feel about the song) Anyway, I liked it, even just as music with no pretty pictures or context to go with it :)

I haven't finished Purrdence's poll yet, but I was suprised at how much I liked the songs in the women poll, my favourite bands with female singers were disproportionately represented, and my favourite male vocalist even got a showing :)

I decided I'd try and wash out the taste of all the Britney Spears in Cool vids to uncool music by seeing how many vids I know of using the songs of my favourite band, Radiohead. Most of these are angsty and/or violent (I loves me some angsty violence).

Really fantastic:

Rodeohead by Absolute Destiny. Firefly as a countrified medley of Radiohead songs. Perfect.

Creep by BradCPU. BTVS. Faith and Buffy and Spike. I adore this vid, it's just the kind of angst I like.

ataxi pointed me towards The Coolness Index, listing the top 10 songs Last FM users are ashamed to admit they like, and I was amused by the fact that I had JUST watched two vids with songs from the top 5, and another earlier in the day. And thinking about it, catchy but uncool songs are perfect for vids which want to tell a story straight and get under your skin, and poke fun of themselves at the same time, which is one of my favourite types of vid.

Britney Spears, Piece of Me by obsessive24. "The life and times of Britney Spears", remarkably effective.

Rihanna, Disturbia by xCraZy18gurlx. Final Fantasy XII, Balthier/Fran. Ok, this is a total cheesey guilty pleasure but enjoyable for what it is :)

Lady Gaga, Paparazzi

Lady Gaga, Lovegame

Anyone got vids recs for the other songs? EDIT: See comments for some more alternatives.

I'm pretty sure I've seen a "Womanizer" vid for a fandom I'm not in at some point. EDIT: Found it:Akanishi Jin fanvid. Don't really like it that much, though the syncing of one pop star's dances to another's song was fairly well done.

Lily posted a musical autobiography, I thought instead I'd try and find songs from important moments in my life which I identified with at the time. These are mostly angsty/break up songs because that's my favourite genre, and my emotional involvement with music seems to be directly proportional to how teenage and/or depressed I am feeling.